If I go away somewhere and have a couple of hours to myself, it's a near certainty that I'll go for a run. I love exploring a place on the run - you can obviously see so much more that way, and I also find it really helps me to get orientated in a new place.
My colleagues in Melbourne had all told me that THE place to go running was 'the Tan', which is a circular route round the Melbourne Botanical Gardens. So I set off from my hotel in the CBD.
TBH the Tan was a great running track, but to get the mileage I was thinking of I'd have been going round and round all day, so I did a couple of edges of the circuit, and headed off into the suburbs.
I had planned to get down to Albert Park and run the F1 circuit, but my famous sense of direction intervened and I ended up running down a really long drag for ages, and only just clipped the corner of the Albert Park circuit. I did see some nice big kerbs with characteristic looking black tyre marks on them, so I called that a partial success.
I then pointed myself towards the sea, and found the St Kilda pier. I have really vivid memories of this place from the first, and second times I was in Melbourne (2003 & 2005). On the first, it was a miserable cold day and I took refuge in the little cafe at the end of the pier for a massive mug of coffee and an even bigger piece of chocolate cake. On my second visit to Melbourne I'd made a point of going to visit the same cafe for more of their awesome cake, but was disappointed to find it had burned to the ground.
12 years later on visit number 3 it had again been rebuilt, but on this occasion there was no time for cake.
I got back to the beach and ran roughly north west for ~5km into a strong head wind, my knees really starting to show some residual pain from the ultra I had attempted the previous week. After reaching the big Tasmania ferries at Port Melbourne I turned inland again and made my best effort to reach the popular walkway on the river Yarra.
I found the river somewhere around the Crown Plaza and made my way again East. It was nice enough running on this iconic part of the river, but as it was around lunch time on fathers day, possibly a bit too congested with families out and about to make swift running possible.
My last leg was back up into the CBD, where I did that funny thing runners sometimes do where we take a completely unnecessary and circuitous route in order to get our overall miles up. I was getting close to a half marathon distance, so I went for a wee lap of Treasury Gardens to get myself over the line.
It was a good run despite 5 or 10 minutes of ridiculously heavy rain. I reckon the city of Melbourne could do worse than use this route for a full-on half-marathon race if they wanted!
